The Koala Who Could

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Field, J., Wroe, S., Trueman, C. N., Garvey, J. & Wyatt-Spratt, S. Looking for the archaeological signature in Australian megafaunal extinctions. Quat. Int. 285, 76–88 (2013). Nagy, K. & Martin, R. Field metabolic rate, water flux, food consumption and time budget of koalas, Phascolarctos cinereus (Marsupialia: Phascolarctidae) in Victoria. Aust. J. Zool. 33, 655–665 (1985). Varet, H., Brillet-Guéguen, L., Coppée, J.-Y. & Dillies, M.-A. SARTools: a DESeq2- and edgeR-based R pipeline for comprehensive differential analysis of RNA-Seq data. PLoS One 11, e0157022 (2016). Benson, G. Tandem repeats finder: a program to analyze DNA sequences. Nucleic Acids Res. 27, 573–580 (1999). Wang, J. COANCESTRY: a program for simulating, estimating and analysing relatedness and inbreeding coefficients. Mol. Ecol. Resour. 11, 141–145 (2011).

The Koala Who Could Read Aloud and Discussion Questions The Koala Who Could Read Aloud and Discussion Questions

Alfano, N. et al. Endogenous gibbon ape leukemia virus identified in a rodent ( Melomys burtoni subsp.) from Wallacea (Indonesia). J. Virol. 90, 8169–8180 (2016). The questions also help your students reflect on that it can be difficult to admit your fears and anxieties, but change can bring new and wonderful experiences. Kratzing, J. E. The anatomy and histology of the nasal cavity of the koala ( Phascolarctos cinereus). J. Anat. 138, 55–65 (1984). Pond, S.L.K. & Muse, S.V. HyPhy: hypothesis testing using phylogenies. in Statistical Methods in Molecular Evolution 125–181 (Springer, New York, 2005). When an infant koala – called a joey– is born, it immediately climbs up to its mother’s pouch. Blind and earless, a joey uses its strong sense of touch and smell,as well as natural instinct, to find its way.

Roberts, R. G. et al. New ages for the last Australian megafauna: continent-wide extinction about 46,000 years ago. Science 292, 1888–1892 (2001). Broad-scale population management of koalas is critical to conservation efforts. This is challenging because distribution models are not easily generalized across bioregions, and further complicated by the unique regional conservation issues described above. Since it is not possible to generalize management, it is imperative that decisions are informed by empirical data relevant to each bioregion. Brown, J.D. & O’Neill, R.J. The evolution of centromeric DNA sequences. Encyclopedia of Life Sciences https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470015902.a0020827.pub2 (Wiley, Hoboken, NJ, USA, 2014).

koala facts! | National Geographic Kids 10 fascinating koala facts! | National Geographic Kids

O’Neill, R. J. W., O’Neill, M. J. & Graves, J. A. M. Undermethylation associated with retroelement activation and chromosome remodelling in an interspecific mammalian hybrid. Nature 393, 68–72 (1998). Nagaki, K. et al. Sequencing of a rice centromere uncovers active genes. Nat. Genet. 36, 138–145 (2004). Repeat content was called using RepeatMasker with combined RepBase libraries (v 2015-08-07) and RepeatModeller calls generated from the genome assemblies. The resulting calls were then filtered using custom Python scripts to remove short fragments (see “Code availability”) and combine tandem or overlapping repeat calls. To characterize the centromeric regions of the genome, chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) was performed using the Invitrogen MAGnify Chromatin Immunoprecipitation System (Revision 6). Repeat content of the centromeric regions was determined using RepBase annotated marsupial repeats and output from RepeatModeller analysis of koala. RepeatMasker was used to locate repeats. Candidate centromeric segments were identified using two sliding window analyses, with window sizes of 200 kb and 20 kb and step sizes of 100 kb and 10 kb, respectively. Small tandem repeats were discovered in koala RSX sequence using the Tandem Repeat Finder program 87, using +2, –3, and –7 as scores for match, mismatch and gap opening, respectively. Alignments of consensus repeat units with the RSX sequence were processed to obtain nucleotide frequency at each position. Genome annotation and gene family analysis Dennison, S. et al. Population genetics of the koala ( Phascolarctos cinereus) in north-eastern New South Wales and south-eastern Queensland. Aust. J. Zool. 64, 402–412 (2017). Hobbs, M. et al. Long-read genome sequence assembly provides insight into ongoing retroviral invasion of the koala germline. Sci. Rep. 7, 15838 (2017).Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and Institute for Systems Genomics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA Further information on experimental design is available in the Nature Research Reporting Summary linked to this article. Code availability National Herbarium of New South Wales, Royal Botanic Gardens & Domain Trust, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

The Koala Who Could: Bright, Rachel, Field, Jim The Koala Who Could: Bright, Rachel, Field, Jim

Li, H. & Durbin, R. Inference of human population history from individual whole-genome sequences. Nature 475, 493–496 (2011). Lynch, M. et al. Genetic drift, selection and the evolution of the mutation rate. Nat. Rev. Genet. 17, 704–714 (2016). Although you may have heard people call them koala ‘bears’, these awesome animals aren’t bears at all – they are in fact marsupials. A group of mammals, most marsupials have pouches where their newborns develop.Homology amongst marsupial chromosomes was determined previously from cross-species chromosome painting, which divided marsupial genomes into 19 conserved segments* and could be extrapolated to all previously G-banded marsupial karyotypes †. Koala chromosome 7 corresponds to conserved segments C7 and C8, which are located on the short arm of wallaby chromosome 7 and long arm of tammar wallaby chromosome 1 respectively, and on the short arm of opossum chromosome 1 (insert). The contigs (indicated by different colours) making up each koala supercontig and the size of the supercontigs are indicated. The tammar wallaby scaffold identifier numbers have also been provided. Gray short-tailed opossum chromosome 1 has been used as a reference as the sequence has been oriented on the gray short-tailed opossum chromosome 83. Gleadow, R. M., Haburjak, J., Dunn, J. E., Conn, M. E. & Conn, E. E. Frequency and distribution of cyanogenic glycosides in Eucalyptus L’Hérit. Phytochemistry 69, 1870–1874 (2008). This product is for individual single-classroom use only. Copying, altering, redistributing, editing, or re-selling anything from this product is strictly forbidden. The characterization of koala CYP2Cs has significant therapeutic potential. The high expression levels of CYP2C genes in the liver helps to explain why meloxicam, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) known to be metabolized by the protein product of CYP2C in humans 36, 37 and frequently used for pain relief in veterinary care, is so rapidly metabolized in the koala and a handful of other eucalypt-eating marsupials (common brushtail possum and eastern ringtail possum) compared with eutherian species 37, 38. It is expected that other NSAIDs are also rapidly metabolized in koalas and have little efficacy at suggested doses 39. Anti-chlamydia antibiotics such as chloramphenicol are degraded rapidly by koalas; treatment with a single dose applicable to humans is insufficient in koalas, which require a daily dose for up to 30 to 45 d. This discovery of CYP2C gene expression levels will inform new research into the pharmacokinetics of medicines in koalas. Taste, smell and food choice